Did 'Old World Early Paleolithic' People Travel to North America?

Abstract

For creationists, these reports of 'Early Paleolithic tools' raise questions that need further research.

It has been assumed
that a fairly advanced Paleo-Indian culture, the Clovis people, rounded the
Bering land bridge during the Ice Age and passed by land through the ice-free
corridor into the United States, Central America and South America.1 Although the timing of this migration is disputed, most
researchers would place this migration at about 11,000 years ago within the
uniformitarian geological time scale.2

However, the above scenario is being challenged on several
fronts, one of which is a report by Chlachula and Leslie of ‘Old
World Early Paleolithic tools’ near Peace River and Calgary, Alberta,
Canada.3,4 The ‘stone artefacts’ consist of various quartzite
cobbles and flakes that presumably have been worked by man into choppers.5
Drawings of the stones show them as freshly chipped tools. But photographs
show that the broken parts of the rocks have a rough, weathered look and
do not even look like ‘tools.’ (Interestingly, the stone
tools are usually illustrated with artistic drawings that show a man-made,
fresh appearance. Photographs of the stones are rarely shown.) The ‘tools’
are similar to tools from the Lower Paleolithic industries from Pleistocene
Eurasia6 and to the ‘Oldowan industry’
from the Oldovai Gorge, east-central Africa.

How strong is this evidence that Lower Paleolithic people rounded
the Bering land bridge during an interglacial or interstadial7
and entered the United States? Are the ‘tools’ really human
artefacts or are they geofacts (fashioned by geology)?

Artefacts or geofacts?

Chlachula and
Leslie admit that some of the previously defined cultural attributes of these
‘tools’ could occasionally develop naturally on fractured quartzose rocks,
especially in glacial settings.8 Yet, they
dismiss this possibility because the cobbles are all of similar size, display
a regularity of flaking, and are similar to other ‘tools’ found elsewhere
in the world.9

Some archaeologists
are skeptical that the stones are indeed ‘tools.’

Robert Young, Bruce Rains and Gerald Osborn,10
for example, are skeptical of Chlachula’s stone ‘tools.’
They believe natural agencies could have fashioned such rudimentary tools,
and one of them ‘ … has seen flakes being pried off round quartzite
cobbles in till [boulder clay, deposited by a glacier] northwest of Calgary
by growth of gypsum crystals in hairline fractures.’11 Anthropologist Don Grayson is critical
of crude stone tools in general, since such tools are found at a number
of sites that are believed to be non-archaeological.12 He states that a wide variety of
natural processes, such as freeze-thaw, stream tumbling, or debris flows
can produce geofacts: ‘Archaeologists have long known that rocks
tumbled as such fans are being formed can look much like artifacts.’
13

Don Dumond, professor
of anthropology at the University of Oregon, USA, in a letter to Science
News, probably stated the thoughts of many when he commented on similar
Lower Paleolithic ‘tools’ found in Siberia:

‘[The article] omits a crucial question that has
plagued archaeologists at various sites for more than a century: Are
those broken rocks from the Diring site demonstrably the products of
human workmanship? Among my own archaeologist colleagues who have seen
one or more of Mochanov’s presentations and examined his specimens,
the answer is an almost universal—and resounding—negative.’ 14

The Diring Yuriakh site in Siberia, referred to by Dumond, is
still believed by many to be a genuine Lower Paleolithic campground littered
with stone tools. However, the ‘artefacts’ from two other
sites are admitted to be geofacts.15

Chlachula and
Leslie attempt to counter such skepticism:

‘Assumptions that ice can generate artefact-looking
“geofacts” in large numbers reflect either a lack of familiarity with
“pebble tool” stone industries and (or) a limited understanding of glacial
dynamics and related ice-marginal depositional processes.’8

This
may or may not be true. Regardless, the authors are assuming that the
geology of the area was fashioned by uniformitarian mechanisms. Is it
possible that tool-shaped stones can be fashioned by catastrophic action?

The cobbles were originally ‘fashioned’ from
the preglacial coarse gravels that mantle much of the plains of southern
and central Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, and north-central and northeast
Montana. A few tools are found still associated with this gravel which
has been clearly deposited by water. For example, the cobbles and boulders
are well rounded by water action. The authors, as well as other investigators,
assume these quartzite gravels were eroded from the Rocky Mountains, since
quartzite outcrops widely in the mountains but not on the plains. Further,
they envisage that the gravel was transported and deposited from meandering
rivers. However there is a problem with this explanation. The coarse
gravels are found on top of high plateaus (or erosion surfaces) up to
at least 700 km from their source. They are generally in massive beds
and have been violently hammered as indicated by abundant percussion marks.
This is not evidence of a meandering river, but of catastrophic transport
and deposition by water.16,17

Most of the ‘tools’
were found within glacial debris, which suggests that they were reworked from
the preglacial gravel and glacially transported. Several of the ‘tools’
near Peace River are partly striated or fluvially abraded to some degree.
It should be noted that some of the pre-glacial gravel is still in situ
at both sites, implying that glacial erosion was only slight. Obviously the
area could not have been covered by many ice sheets over millions of years,
or the gravel would have been disturbed. The persistence of the gravel is
more in line with one post-Flood short Ice Age.2,18

To complicate
the situation even further, Chlachula and Leslie report that identical lithic
assemblages are now found abundantly distributed across Alberta after the
Ice Age! This would mean that a number of groups of people using early Paleolithic
stone tools entered the New World at the same time as the Clovis people.
So far no early Paleolithic ‘tools’ have been found further south in unglaciated
areas. This could indicate that the stone ‘tools’ are just geological artefacts.
Or it could be that archaeologists have never looked for them, since early
Stone Age people were not supposed to have entered the New World.

A biblical perspective

For creationists,
these reports of ‘Early Paleolithic tools’ raise questions that need further
research. If the ‘tools’ are genuine human artefacts, it means that one group
of people with the crudest stone tools imaginable made the long journey during
the Ice Age at the same time as the sophisticated Clovis people. Alternatively,
it could also mean that the same people used both very crude and sophisticated
tools. Either way, this new research greatly complicates the nice, neat
archaeological tool classification system in which old tools were replaced
by more sophisticated tools as man supposedly evolved. There is also the
question of how supposedly ‘archaic’ human beings, defined by the evolutionary
scheme, could round the Bering land bridge in a cold climate. During an ‘interglacial,’
the climate would be similar to today, with very cold winters and difficult
travel in summer due to boggy substrate above permafrost. If they travelled
during an ice age within the uniformitarian scheme, the climate would be
much colder than today.

Another possibility
is that these tools are really geofacts and were formed by catastrophic action
that uniformitarian geologists automatically dismiss. Strong currents flowing
off the land during the Recessional stage of the Flood, or post-Flood Ice
Age mechanisms, could possibly have formed the ‘tools’ in Alberta. Since
the ‘tools’ found in Alberta are similar to other ‘tools’ found in Europe,
Asia and Africa, these other ‘tools’ could also be geofacts. Since the Flood
was global, the catastrophe of the Flood could possibly explain the chipped
stones elsewhere. Also possible are local post-Flood catastrophes that could
garner enough fluvial energy to fashion rounded cobbles into the form of chipped
‘tools.’

Acknowledgement

I thank Ray Strom
of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for looking over the manuscript.

References

For information on the Ice Age, the Bering land bridge, and why the
lowlands of Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon would have had a mild, ice-free
climate hospitable for migrating people and animals see: Oard, M.J., An
Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood, Institute for Creation
Research, Santee, California, 1990. Return to text.

Within the standard uniformitarian multiple-ice-age
scheme, an interglacial is the warm time between two glacial periods
(such as occurring now before the ‘next’ ice age), while an interstadial is
a warm phase within one glaciation. Return to text.

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